Paul, does adding an Einstein like reliable communications port to the Zeus make engineering and business sense?

Answer: Sorry, this doesn't make economic sense. To properly implement this would require a complete new product. Ir's very hard to implement IGBT control when capacitors are shared to multiple heads.The current Zeus is considered, by the remote, as a single light. We're I to try to implement IGBT control and remote of the channels separately it would be impossible to obtain any degree of accuracy since what one channel asks from the caps affects what is available to the other channel. Plus, each flash head has a different duration and color temperature so the task of creating the sort of accuracy and control found in Einstein would fall somewhere between impossible and a system even more complex and expensive than Bron.

Question 2: I assume the zeus can take the CC/CSR+...doesnt that get you a lot of the control. i know you wont get the color temp and flash duration control, but to me, the digital control and modeling lamp control would be a nice feature.

i dont have any of those remotes, but i do plan on adding them at some point to my x3200s and abr800.

Answer: Cyber Commander and CSR+ stores and displays t.1 duration and color temperature info for every possible configuration of Zeus and flash head, but treats one Zeus as one light, and therefore cannot calculate or control two light heads separately.

Dumb Question: Does the Einstein use capacitor switching (as the AB Max was to) in addition to IGBT management, or does IGBT technology render capacitor bank switching unnecessary?

Thanks.

Answer: No, the implementation of IGBT control eliminates any need for capacitor switching and provides far more accuracy and performance than capacitor switching schemes. In particular, while capacitor switching can shorten t.1 durations and is a step toward more constant color, there remains the "tail" of the flash discharge curve that still causes motion blur beyond the t.1 time - at an intensity of 3f below the peak exposure. This can still blur lighter color portions of the scene significantly more than the t.1 time would imply. With pure IGBT control there is no "tail" so the action stopping is truly equivalent to the On/Off action of a mechanical shutter. See http://blog.bronimaging.com/2010/01/broncolor-scoro-enhanced-color-temperature-control-ectc/ for a good explanation of properly configured IGBT control.

However, Einstein will fire before 100% charge is reached. Even if you speed fire before 100% ready, the nature of the IGBT circuitry is completely different than conventional studio flash in that the capacitors don't completely discharge with each shot so at the lower power settings, only a small portion of the capacitor charge is dissipated with each shot. Thus a fast sequence of shots - faster than the 100% recycle time, will cause much less variation in exposure and color from shot to shot as you would see in a conventional system.

For example, a shot at 1/16 power leaves about 15/16 capacitor charge, thus an immediate second shot will have most of the charge remaining and will not affect the output significantly. A long sequence of shots way before 100% recycle will result in a successive lowering of exposure as the capacitors are discharged at a faster rate than the charging circuit can keep up with. This action is similar to a speedlight set at low power.

At a guess, I would say you could expect good 5fps performance at about 1/10 power (64WS) and 8fps at about 40WS. But don't quote me yet . . . I'll try to do some tests and give you more exact info.

Paul, is it possible to provide multimax like features like speedcycler and multipop using future firmware updates for Cybersync/Einstein? it seems like IGBT could make very elegant implementations of these features.

amplexis wrote:
Paul, is it possible to provide multimax like features like speedcycler and multipop using future firmware updates for Cybersync/Einstein? it seems like IGBT could make very elegant implementations of these features.
This sort of stuff is certainly possible but would require a great deal of research and programming. Fortunately, all the elements are in place so it wouldn't require additional hardware costs - at least not at first glance. The biggest concern would be what is needed/desired and potential sales volume VS development costs.

kenyeeRegistered: Jul 08, 2008Total Posts: 1528Country: United States

Paul Buff wrote:
However, Einstein will fire before 100% charge is reached.

Is there an option to wait for it to reach 100% (or maybe some percentage like 80% to minimize color changes) before it'll fire? Someone's going to gripe about color casts because they fired a sequence w/o waiting for the beep so think of this as a dummy setting :-P

What he's saying is that there won't be a color shift (at least noticeable) when it's partially discharged, due to the IGBT control. It would be nice to enable only firing at 100%, but it's not too bad since it has a piezo now.

kenyee wrote:Paul Buff wrote:
However, Einstein will fire before 100% charge is reached.

Is there an option to wait for it to reach 100% (or maybe some percentage like 80% to minimize color changes) before it'll fire? Someone's going to gripe about color casts because they fired a sequence w/o waiting for the beep so think of this as a dummy setting :-P

They won't be nearly as unhappy with shots that need a little post work than with blank frames. That's why we allow fire before 100%. If your at a fixed motor drive speed and you're shooting 5% faster than 100% cycle you'll get every other frame blank without this feature.

kenyeeRegistered: Jul 08, 2008Total Posts: 1528Country: United States

Paul Buff wrote:
They won't be nearly as unhappy with shots that need a little post work than with blank frames.

...no doubt they'd gripe about the blank frames

kenyeeRegistered: Jul 08, 2008Total Posts: 1528Country: United States

Paul Buff wrote:
They won't be nearly as unhappy with shots that need a little post work than with blank frames.

What is the length with the cover on compared to the current ABs with the short flash cover? Will it be close enough to pack like this without removing the pyrex dome?

http://i42./35jmjiw.jpg
Einstein would be about two inches longer unless you took out the model lamps and the glass dome. Even then it would be around 3/4" longer. The short AB covers shown require removing the model lamps.

Short cover will fit, but you would have to remove the glass dome and the modeling lamp. The Einstein body is 1" longer than AB but 1/2" smaller in height and width. I would recommend leaving the dome on. It's not hard to remove, but not as easy as the short cover - and it protects the lamps. Sorry to mess up you tidy little package. Complete Einstein dimensions are in the download manual.